Who says higher education lacks heart-or is that Hart? Hart House Theatre, a first-class performance space nestled in between University College and Queen’s Park, is set to debut its 2005-2006 season this week. Built back in 1919, Hart House continues its long tradition of infusing both drama and comedy into the veins of U of T.
Ever since winning a new mandate five years ago, Hart House Theatre has been committed to mounting a full season of productions that cater to students, theatre buffs, and culture vultures alike. Tapping into the talents of students, alumni, and well-known professionals, Hart House has long been an incubator of theatre on campus, counting such luminaries as William Hutt, Kate Reid, David Gardner, Donald Sutherland, Norman Jewison, and Lorne Michaels amongst its alumni.
The season kicks off tomorrow with the Hart House premiere of Oleanna, one of David Mamet’s more serious and ethics-driven plays. Directed by Graham Cozzubbo, (who was at the helm of The Ibsen Project a few years back), Oleanna explores the murky borders of student-teacher relationships. The play, which is often described as one of Mamet’s most divisive and controversial, poses tough questions about the definition of sexual harassment, and challenges the social tendency to accept every charge as evidence of guilt.
However, Cozzubbo is quick to point out that this is merely the tip of the iceberg. “Mamet’s up to much more in the interior-it’s not just a lesson in being politically correct,” quips the veteran director over the phone during a recent technical run of the play.
“This play is actually about two people who have this hope of perfection, which ultimately leaves them equally entangled and equally destroyed.”
As with most of Mamet’s work, the characters in Oleanna are rigged to explode rather than merely interact. Although it may lack the gratuitous “jagoffs” and F-bombs (there are exactly two in the script, compared to the super-profane Glengarry Glen Ross) of his more feisty work, Oleanna still delivers the human fireworks that make Mamet a master of taking people apart piece-by-piece until all that remains is raw emotion.
Ever-present in the prose is Mamet’s trademarked dialogue style. His voices have a unique way of sounding intensely natural and fluid, but upon closer inspection prove to be loaded with a carefully arranged code existing right below the surface. Oleanna, in a style reminiscent of Kurosawa’s classic film Rashomon, creates a world in which different interpretations of events are constantly in conflict, and yet seem to exist in concert. Mamet forces the audience to establish their own version of the truth, which will almost always differ from one person to the next.
Regardless of how the audience interprets the actions of Oleanna’s characters, Cozzubbo is confident that people will be affected by the play.
“He sets people off,” Cozzubbo says of Mamet’s take-no-prisoners approach to scriptwriting. “He touches some hidden nerve inside.”
Oleanna stars Stratford vet Richard Stewart as professor John, and fourth-year University College drama student Kearsten Lyon (Hart House regulars will remember her as Val from last year’s production of WASPS).
Also coming to Hart House this season are Romeo and Juliet (directed by Jeremy Hutton), Timothy Findley’s The Stillborn Lover (directed by Martin Hunter), and get your black eyeliner and lingerie ready for UC Follies’ January production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (directed by U of T’s own Elena Mosoff).
Oleanna starts tomorrow at Hart House Theatre (7 Hart House Circle) and runs to Sept. 24. Advance tickets ($12 for students) are available at uofttix.ca or (416) 978-8849. See The Varsity next week for a review of the show.
